Community Spotlight — Julia Hausner-Hennig

November 16, 2017

Julia was born in a middle-sized city in Bavaria, Germany, called Fürth. Although she spent half her childhood in San Diego, California, it didn’t take her long to come back to Germany with her parents and siblings, and to later on set up her life in the heart of Bavaria, where she now lives with her husband, their two young boys, and her seven loving snakes.

Yes, she has seven snakes as pets, you heard that right. But, before you think of seven evil-eyed rattlesnakes slithering around the house, she guarantees her pets are not dangerous at all. They’re “all non-poisonous and I love them to death”, says Julia.

The one in the picture below looks kind of cute if you ask me (his name is Bullet).

However, taking care of her seven pet snakes is not the only hobbie Julia cares about. She loves spending time with her family, doing all sorts of creative things, and to ride roller coasters, whenever she has the time.

Her passion for roller coasters is so strong that she even got married in an amusement park! “I rode all roller coasters in my wedding dress, that was just my idea of a perfect day”, as Julia recalls.

She joined Unbabel’s community of 50,000 translation editors 6 months ago, working with both German-to-English and English-to-German content (she also speaks some Spanish and French, but they’re “a little rusty”).

I love doing translations because it brings me closer to people, and platforms like Unbabel help remove misunderstandings and bring people together all around the world.

She also has a lot of fun doing it. “I know that someone out there is reading the words I have in some small way chosen to describe something — it’s really rewarding to help people understand each other.”

And it can be pretty funny too — particularly whenever she sees some initial translations into English of German take-out menus. “Sometimes I wonder if it wouldn’t have been better to just leave them in German!”

Julia loves working outside during summertime while enjoying a cold drink and listening to her favourite playlists with a mix of metalcore bands. But, sometimes, she just likes to turn it all off. “I am so deeply focussed, that I wouldn’t even notice a bomb dropped next door.”

Most of the time she translates on her mobile using the Unbabel app: “my laptop decided to die a few months ago so, I work over my phone only, which works really quite well”.